Meigle’s World War One Dead – The Fallen of the First World War as commemorated on the Village War Memorial

As interest in the First World War increased during its centenary period, and with records increasingly available to assist researching individual stories, I took up a personal investigation into the sixteen men killed and commemorated on the Meigle War Memorial, Strathmore. I wanted to ensure that the stories I was going to tell would be accessible to ordinary local people, and the families of the men who were the subject of my work. I made the decision to conduct as much research as possible, despite finding the style of academic history dramatically different to what I was familiar with. During this phase of exploring and collating these stories, I gave a couple of talks on my research including one to the Meigle & District History Society. This was attended by Tom Paton, a nephew of the Tom Brown (MM) whose story I had investigated, who still had his relative's wartime medals. Various photographs and papers also provided further insight to my findings, sourced from family members of some of the other soldiers. On investigating how to disseminate my work, I decided to self-publish so established my own publishing house. Balmacron Publishing's first publication - “Meigle’s WW1 Dead – The Fallen of the First World War as commemorated on the Village War Memorial” - was released on 18 May 2015.